Advanced Techniques
Phrase Searching
When two or more words are entered without surrounding quotation marks, only articles containing all of the terms will be returned. They may appear in any order and anywhere in the document.
To search for exact phrases, put quotation marks around the phrase (e.g. "Acme Corporation").
NOTE: Searching exact phrases in the First Name or Last Name field is not recommended for two reasons: (1) the order in which last and first names appear often differ (e.g. "Smith, William" vs. "William Smith"), and (2) sometimes a middle initial will be included (e.g. "William E. Smith" vs. "William Smith")
Proximity Operators
Proximity operators allow you to specify just how close two words must occur in a story to be included in your results. See the examples below. military NEAR/5 service - contains military and service within five words, in any order.
Wild Cards
| Operator | Definition | Example |
|---|---|---|
| * | Fills in a maximum of any five characters | pollu*n |
| ? | Fills in any single character | wom?n |